Edited by Niamh O’Mahony

Trevor Joyce: A bibliography

Editorial note: Trevor Joyce is a contemporary Irish poet whose work attests to the endurance and proliferation of a diversity of modernist traditions in Irish literature. Born in Dublin in 1947, Joyce has written more than seventeen volumes of poetry since his initial collection, Sole Glum Trek, was published in 1967. This book was the first to appear from New Writers Press (NWP), which Joyce cofounded with Michael Smith with the intention of publishing young poets from Ireland and abroad who were not receiving an audience through the few Irish presses in existence. Joyce and Smith published some rather trenchant editorials in the in-house journal The Lace Curtain over the following years; however, their inaugural statement of intent for the press was less polemical. In an addendum to Sole Glum Trek, the editors describe the range and scope of the writers they intend to publish as follows: “Believing poets should be beyond the herd instinct, they belong to no school, movement, club or clique. They are all serious poets, that is, human beings for whom writing poetry is morally, a profoundly central activity, not a mere hobby or ornamental grace” (Joyce, “Irish Terrain: Alternative Planes of Cleavage,” in Assembling Alternatives: Reading Postmodern Poetries Transnationally,277). This project began as a study aid for my own research on Joyce, and the material amassed complicates understandings of his oeuvre and its significance to Irish poetry. The primary list of Joyce’s books and chapbooks led to a section on individual poems published, and his editorial work with NWP prompted a record of prose essays and reviews. Each new reference revealed another, and the bibliography quickly incorporated as much of the valuable and scarce secondary criticism as possible. With time, patterns emerged across the bibliography. From the early ’90s onwards, several names appear again and again in the sections on secondary criticism and reviews, so much so that the same four critics are responsible for writing nearly half of all of the essays on Joyce’s work. The bibliography emerged out of frustration with the wildly dispersed nature of Joyce criticism and the lack of a catalogue comparable to Nate Dorward’s checklists on J. H. Prynne (recently extended by Michael Tencer) and Tom Raworth.

There are several points to note and editorial decisions to explain that should help to make the bibliography more useful. All of the sections from “Poetry: Books and pamphlets” to “Video/Sound Recordings” are organized chronologically from earliest to most recent. The critical writing on Joyce which follows — “Secondary criticism,” “Reviews” and “Notes/Introductions” — is organized alphabetically, with “Dictionary entries” arranged chronologically. The references are broadly consistent with Chicago documentation style; however, further information regarding publishers’ names, place of publication, dates, and reprints is also included intermittently. Usually, these additions are intended as an acknowledgement of those editors publishing Joyce’s poetry; however, they also keep the references in line with individual publisher’s style, as in Randolph Healy’s specification of “Bray, Co. Wicklow” as the location of Wild Honey Press. On the subject of publishers, New Writers’ Press was established by Joyce and Smith, along with Smith’s wife Irene. The names included in my references to the Press — Michael Smith and Trevor Joyce — cohere with the editorial information provided in each individual publication.

Returning to the bibliography, the references to Joyce’s poetry collections include information on the number of pages, which is followed by the print run of each collection in parentheses, e.g. (150). This information is important in distinguishing pamphlets from chapbooks and longer collections, and for emphasizing the small press distribution of most of Joyce’s poetry. For with the first dream of fire they hunt the cold and Courts of Air and Earth,I use the acronym “POD” to indicate print-on-demand, which means that there is no print run in the traditional sense. Joyce’s essay “New Writers’ Press: The History of a Project” includes an extensive bibliography of the NWP books in which he is credited for cover art on five of his own poetry collections, as well as several other NWP publications. These include Jorge Luis Borges’s Poems, Michael Smith’s Homage to James Thomson (B. V.) at Portobello, and Michael Hartnett’s Tao: A Version of the Chinese Classic of the Sixth Century. There is a drawing by Joyce of the Man in the Moon modeled on that of Gyffyn Church included in the New Writers’ Press Archive at the National Library of Ireland. That image was used for the cover of Sole Glum Trek (1967), and would later become the logo of Zozimus, a Cork-based imprint of NWP. Incidentally, Joyce also created the cover image for Without Asylum.

The bibliography is not exhaustive; there are a number of publications and references that still elude me, and of course Joyce is still writing and publishing. That said, many people helped in compiling this bibliography, and I would like to acknowledge some of them here: my thanks to James Cummins, Alex Davis, Nate Dorward, Marcella Edwards, Harry Gilonis, John Goodby, Trevor Joyce, Justin Katko, David Lloyd, Jim Mays, and Keith Tuma.

Suggestions for further references would be greatly appreciated and can be submitted to Jacket2. — Niamh O’Mahony

“STILLSMAN.” In Vinyl: Material Location Placement,edited by Simon Cutts, np. Tipperary: Coracle, 2005. In this book, Cutts records the exhibition of Joyce’s poem “STILLSMAN” as an installation as part of the vinyl: project for installation held in Cork City during July and August 2005.

“New Writers’ Press: The History of a Project.” In Modernism and Ireland: The Poetry of the 1930s,edited by Patricia Coughlan and Alex Davis, 276–306. Cork: Cork University Press, 1995.

“The Point of Innovation in Irish Poetry.” In For the Birds: Proceedings of the First Cork Conference on New and Experimental Irish Poetry, edited by Harry Gilonis, 18–24. Sutton, UK: Mainstream; Dublin: hardPressed, 1998. Reprinted in “Six Poets: Views and Interviews.” Special issue, The Gig, no. 2 (2001): 45–50. Edited by Nate Dorward. Willowdale, Ontario: The Gig, 2001. Also reprinted in New Writers’ Press Anthology, edited by Martin Dolan and Michael Smith with an introduction by Declan Kiberd, 16–22, 23–30. Poznan: Motivex, 2004.

“‘Approach of Bodies Falling in Time of Plague’ and ‘Proceeds of a Black Swap’: Some Explanatory Notes.” “The Fly on the Page.” Special issue, The Gig, no. 3(2004): 17–18.Edited by Nate Dorward. Willowdale, Ontario: The Gig.

“Introduction: On This Book.” In Cork Caucus: On Art, Possibility, and Democracy, edited by Trevor Joyce and Shep Steiner, 17–18. Cork: National Sculpture Factory and Revolver, 2006.

Review of When She Was Good,byPhilip Roth, The Far Side of the Sky, by Maslyn Williams, and Satori in Paris, by Jack Kerouac. Hibernia 32, no. 2 (February 1968): 20. Edited by John Mulcahy.

Review of The Hard Hours, by Anthony Hecht, and Just Like the Resurrection, by Patricia Beer. The Dublin Magazine 7, nos. 2–4 (Autumn/Winter 1968): 107–108. Edited by Rivers Carew and Timothy Brownlow. Formerly The Dubliner.

“Nazi Aftermath.” Review of Camp 7 Last Stop, by Hans Hellmut Kirst, and The Hour of the Unicorn, by James Parish. Hibernia 33, no. 10 (May 1969): 16. Edited by John Mulcahy.

“Reading the Metre Before Moving On.” Review of An Introduction to English Poetry,by James Fenton. The Irish Times, July 20, 2002, B9. Edited by Conor Brady.

———. “‘No Narrative Easy in the Mind’: Modernism, the Avant-Garde and Irish Poetry.” In For the Birds: Proceedings of the First Cork Conference on New and Experimental Irish Poetry, edited by Harry Gilonis, 37–49. Dublin: hardPressed Poetry; Surrey: Mainstream Poetry Press, 1998.

Goodby, John. “‘Comes the Experiment’: Irish Poetry and the Avant-Garde.” In The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Poetry,edited by Fran Brearton and Alan Gillis, 214–236. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Goodby, John, and Marcella Edwards. ‘“Glittering Silt’: The Poetry of Trevor Joyce and the Myth of Irishness.” Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies 8, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 173–198. Edited by Kalman Matolcsy.

O’Brien, Treasa. “Niamh Lawlor and Partners Based on a True Story: A Seminar on Mis-Information. University College Cork, 27 January 2007.” Review of “Based on a True Story: A Seminar on Mis-information,” Cork, Ireland, January 27, 2007. Circa, no.119 (Spring 2007): 95–97. Edited by Peter Fitzgerald.

Sirr, Peter. “Ways of Making.” Review of with the first dream of fire they hunt the cold, by Trevor Joyce, and Collected Poems, by Pearse Hutchinson. Poetry Ireland Review, no.73 (Summer 2002): 145–151.

Naimh O'Mahony has curated this feature devoted to the contemporary Irish poet Trevor Joyce, whose whose innovation and creativity have since 1967 constituted a sustained challenge to the conventions of poetry and reading in Ireland and abroad. An exhaustive bibliography of Joyce's poetry and criticism, an interview with the poet, and a critical essay are accompanied by poetry and composition notes by Joyce that bring his practice to bear on his legacy.

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